CORE contemporary art

Introduction

The meaning of classic is judged over a period of time to be of the highest quality and outstanding of its kind. A title which aptly describes the reason why as a curator I have personally chosen this particular exhibition. The artists picked are a group of more senior artists who are best known within their respective genres of art — Zulkifli Yusoff and his typography print and collaged wall sculpture, Suhaimi Fadzir with his avant-gardist assemblage, Masnoor Ramli Mahmud a multidisciplinary artist who can manipulate any form of mediums as an expression of his art and Husin Hourmain and his painterly abilities in Islamic art. These artists have produced art forms that withstood the “test” of time and visuals that they have produced remain very relevant despite the changes within the contemporary times. 

Artists Profile

Husin Hourmain; After his successful solo Awal Hurouf, Asal Hurouf II and also his two men show Higera with Md Fadli Yusoff brought about a revisit to his seminal Awal Hurouf Asal Hurouf of Jawi callligrpahy works, Husin is exploring a more minimal style of works. His latest Kiswah works which span oddly at 8 feet in height by 1.5 feet in width offer the audience an interesting perspective and narrow the viewer’s focus up to the angular tip of the Kaaba. Kiswah is the cloth that covers the Kaaba in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is draped annually on the 9th day of the month of Dhu al-Hijjah, the day pilgrims leave for the plains of Mount Arafat during the Hajj.

Masnoor Ramli Mahmud; The visuals of New Reality were initially produced in (2002). It was a social commentary on the hazards of uranium. As a set of sequential order, New Reality moves from static (New Reality 1) to medium-speed rotation (New Reality 2) and finally to high-speed rotation (New Reality 3) dispersing all debris and matters out. It is interesting how these three visuals are still relevant 20 years later in the year 2022 reflecting the pandemic to post-pandemic effects — how the society changed from a static livelihood during the lockdown while positively taking charge to manoeuvre their momentum back to “normal”. Many interpretations can be formed from these three powerful visuals. In any static or down moments, life will again rotate continuously just hopefully this time with negativity discarded. 

Suhaimi Fadzir; Dialectical Langkawi is Suhaimi’s latest experiment of creating corten steel finished on steel. Corten steel is a weathering rusty steel widely used in architecture and design. Brown-orange in colour, corten steel reaches its mature stage in around one to three years. The rust aesthetic effect of corten steel makes it a strong appeal to architecture, design and even the art world. Artist like Richard Sierra is well known for their gigantic curved plates corten steel as a walkthrough installation. For Dialectical Langkawi, Suhaimi concocts his formula to mimic the corten steel effect that brings the appeal of brown-orange in odd angular shapes. The rust symbolically reflects the long-existing life, history and myths of Langkawi. If scrutinise closely, Dialectical Langkawi is the study of various maps and topography of Langkawi in a somewhat of a folded origami that provides an interesting stylised abstract of a sculptural form.